Today I came across this brilliant site. It is a blog about bad/inconsiderate parking in the garage at somebody’s workplace. Some fine examples of appalling parking in an attempt to name & shame.
Can we have the same thing for County Mall please? Or any of the car parks in Crawley. With particular emphasis on the occupants of disabled and Mother & Baby spaces. Or just devote the centre pages of the Crawley News or Observer to photos of crap parking.
Of course the shaming only works if you leave the number plate showing. Is there a legal problem with that? I notice that the licence plates are visible in all the photos, but on this other site they have been obscured.
On reflection, the best thing would be to let the cars be identified, but keep yourself anonymous…
My preferred approach, as I may have mentioned before, is to just change the wording on signs so they say “this space reserved for disabled badge holders and lazy, selfish arseholes”. You never know, it might work. For some reason I couldn’t persuade the council to try it, even as an experiment.
One thing always bothers me about seeing a car parked partly over two spaces – when people see that, their first reaction tends to be to think “idiot!” (or stronger) – but what if they were just squeezing into the only available space left by *another* person who had been the idiot parker and who then left, leaving your car looking badly parked! If you see what I mean.
The parking area behind my workplace (a University bookshop) is a prime spot for poor parking – and this despite the fact that the University Security guards claim to patrol regularly. Makes me so glad I don’t drive.
On the other point, made by Garen, I have on occasion actually witnessed the act of crap parking but have been too gob-smacked at what some people think is reasonable to do or say anything.
Today I saw a Rover 75 which had been parked in the right place but, crucially, with the hand-brake off and so in the wind it had rolled about a bit.
I know exactly what Garen means – sometimes you wish you could have a little sign which says “I was the last one to park!”.
In one of our local multi-storeys there are parking bays in pairs at the end of each level. Just two spaces. It is surprising how often they are filled with a single car right in the middle.
Are our parking spaces too small though? The size of a standard space (and garage) is defined and used in planning, but I sometimes think it was set when the average cars was a Morris Minor and doesn’t work too well with what we have now.
I did like the American idea of having special spaces for ‘compacts’ when I was first there, and hiring a compact, but seeing those photos it looks like nobody pays much attention.
What winds me up the most is probably seeing other people get an unfair advantage over me because they are able to park like that – I just don’t have the front to do it.